He was buried on Beechey Island, next to John Torrington, who had become the expedition's first fatality on New Year's Day of 1846, and William Braine, who died three months later on 3 April.

[2] His parents were Thomas and Sarah (maiden name: Friar, born 1796) Hartnell who were married at Frindsbury, in the Medway Towns area of Kent, on 9 October 1815, and with whom he was living in Gillingham at the time of the census of 1841.

In 1984, professor of anthropology Owen Beattie from the University of Alberta and a group of scientists arrived at Beechey Island to examine the bodies and determine what may have happened to the three men whose lives ended on the tiny speck of land in the Canadian Arctic Archipelago.

[8] When Hartnell's cap was removed, they saw a great deal of hair – used to determine that his body contained large amounts of lead at the time of his death.

[9] Hartnell's brother, Tom, played by Jack Colgrave Hirst, is a supporting character in the television adaptation of the novel The Terror, and the burial of the three crewmen on Beechey Island is mentioned in the first episode.